Tag Archives: accessibility

Accessible thesis template now available!

Pedagogy, , ,

Written by Ellen Wildman, Digital Accessibility Skills Developer (ISS)

If you support students who need to submit a thesis, let them know there is now a digitally accessible template available that is also aligned with the formatting requirements that the University set. 

Accessible theses are created in a specific way so everyone can use them – regardless of background, circumstance, or disability. An analysis of academic papers sourced from different research areas found that about 98% had accessibility issues (Menzies et al., 2022). Making research available to everyone puts into practice Lancaster University’s lived value of respecting a diverse and inclusive community of communities.  

Student benefits 

As shown in the first page of the template below, by using this template, students will:  

  1. Align their thesis with the necessary layout stipulated by the Manual of Academic Regulations and Procedures. 
  2. Ensure their research is digitally accessible (when used appropriately). 
  3. Enable ease of navigation by using features of Microsoft Word, for example automatically create a dynamic table of contents with heading-use.

Thesis template document in Microsoft Word. The text shows the opening lines of the template which are customisable.

Direct relevant students to visit the Accessible thesis page on ASK to download the template and top-tips to make their thesis accessible. There is also a video to assist those students who might need support to use a Microsoft template. 

Reference  

Menzies, R., Tigwell, G.W. and Crabb, M. (2022). Author Reflections on Creating Accessible Academic Papers. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3546195.  

Lent Term 2025: Training Offering

Events, ,

We will be offering the following lunch-time training sessions to staff in the Faculty of Health and Medicine (FHM) but staff from across the University are very welcome to join:

Wednesday 5th March (12-12:30): Making Resources Digitally Accessible in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint

In this session, we will look at how to use the accessibility checks in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. We will look at some of the common problems with document accessibility and also look at how to use ALLY in Moodle to view and improve the accessibility score of documents. Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop. Follow-up appointment details will be shared in the session to book a 1:1 support meeting to put what you have learned into practice if required.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4347623 

Wednesday 12th March (12-12:30): Quizzes in Moodle

An introduction on how to set up a quiz in Moodle either for formative or summative assessment. We will look at a some example question types and also show an example of an online exam. Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4347630

Wednesday 19th March (12-12:30): Assessment Feedback in Moodle

This session will showcase three different ways to mark and provide feedback on assessments in Moodle. The session will cover how to set up 3 different types of feedback in Moodle: feedback criteria, rubrics and marking guides. Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop. Follow-up appointments are available should you wish to discuss a particular assessment.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4347643

Wednesday 26th March (12-12:30): Video Production in eStream

We will look at how to record a video (including screen capture) and then how to automatically caption the video using eStream, sometimes referred to as ‘Planet eStream’.

This session is useful if you wish to record welcome videos, lectures or show students how to record videos of their own for assignment submissions. Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4347647

Wednesday 2nd April (12-12:30): Groups, Groupings and Group Choice in Moodle

We will look at how to set up a group and groupings of students in Moodle as well as how to set up an activity where students can make a choice about which group they want to be in. This is useful for setting up Learning Sets, group work tasks and more! Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4347650

Meetings will take place online and attendees will receive a recording.

We hope to see you all there!

Using Peer Assessment to support MBChB students in their coursework

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Context

There are many benefits for students getting together to produce a poster, presentation or some other output to demonstrate their learning. However, peer assessment isn’t something I see very often. There could be a range of reasons for this from concern over cohort dynamics, workload, biased student feedback or lack of knowledge on how to set this kind of activity up. However, the benefits of peer assessment, in my opinion, outweigh the reasons why we, as educators, might shy away from it. Paul Chin highlights that one of the benefits of peer assessment is that students can “critique and review someone else’s work and thereby reflect on their own understanding or performance” (Chin, 2016). However, as we know, there are other professional skills that can be developed through peer assessment activities such as communication skills, leadership skills, organisation and teamwork (sometimes known as “soft skills” but the debate around that name can wait for another day!). Many of these professional skills are extremely important to our medical students, for whom this peer assessment was designed. The design of the assessment was done by myself, Liz Walkden,  lecturer Dr. Faye Tucker, our Faculty Librarian, Gem Sosnowsky and Learning Developer, Dr. Beth Caldwell.

The activities, which formed the peer assessment, were for Special Study Module 1 (SSM1). This module is for first year students on Lancaster Medical School’s MBChB programme. Special Study Modules make up the coursework part of Year 1 and Year 2 of the MBChB programme. Year 1 is an opportunity to teach students the skills that they need to succeed in the coursework in a scaffolded way. This then means that they are confident to conduct their own project in the second year.

What did the activity and assessment entail?

The peer assessment activity took place over several days. Students first took part in a 2.5-hour workshop where they met their group and learned what they needed to do. As part of this workshop, students set ground rules for their own group, assigned themselves roles within the group, discussed how and when they would meet and how they might use Microsoft Teams and other tools to coordinate, chat and share files.

Each group was given a set topic to research with relevant readings which they accessed through Moodle. The groups then worked together to create a poster to present to a selection of their peers. There were 27 groups in total, so the groups were split across 3 different rooms/lecture theatres for the live presentations. On the day itself, the cohort were split into three rooms for a conference style session, facilitated by the SSM1.  In this case, presentations were delivered in-person but, if suitable for the cohort or Programme, they could be delivered online using MS Teams or students could record themselves using the video platform eStream.

Not all students had to speak during the presentation of the poster and students could determine themselves who would present depending on the group dynamic and range of skills.

During the presentations, students filled out a short questionnaire providing their feedback on other people’s presentations. For example, a person in group A would give feedback on the presentation of a person in group B. The questionnaire supported engagement during the presentations and gave students a chance to provide constructive feedback to their peers. The set up of the questionnaire meant that students could not just give one-sided feedback; students gave their peers a “takeaway” and a “giveaway” (positive and negative feedback).

It is important that all types of assessment allow for reasonable adjustments for those students with additional needs. In addition, with first year students, it is especially important to offer flexibility as, for many students, delivering a presentation is nerve-wracking and often students are not that familiar with group work before they come to University. In the design process, we carefully considered how to make this an inclusive activity that would provide the flexibility and support to ensure that students could showcase their skills in a safe and positive environment.

“We are sometimes hesitant to do presentations with students as we don’t want students to feel uncomfortable or anxious. The group project allowed flexibility for students to self-organise, and gave them suitable tools to do so, so students could play to their strengths within the group. The way that technology was incorporated into content delivery, assessment, and feedback supported inclusion and learning away from the classroom. It helped students find their own roles in the group and take responsibility for the activity as a team.” – Dr. Faye Tucker

How was this set up in Moodle?

As the FHM Learning Technologist, the first thing I did was set up the relevant groups in Moodle to reflect the groups that students would be working in. I also set up groupings to reflect the three lecture theatres that the cohort would deliver their presentations in.

I then uploaded the resources from the workshop and I also created a help sheet on how students could use Microsoft Teams effectively when conducting a group project. This sheet included a suggestion that students could also use Microsoft Planner and other tools which might support their collaboration.

On the presentation day, the questionnaire was set up in Moodle and made available on the day of the presentations for students to access. The restrict access rule was applied in Moodle to the questionnaire as well as the other activities/files to ensure that each group only saw what was relevant to them. For example, each group saw their own set reading materials but none of the materials related to the other groups’ work. This meant that the resources they needed were more clearly presented on the Moodle page making it easier for students to find.

Overall, set up was straightforward considering there were 27 groups of five students. For support on how to set up groups and groupings in Moodle, check out this help video.

How did staff and students feel that it went?

Dr Faye Tucker felt that the experience was rewarding and can inform future development in the MBChB curriculum:

“This was a great opportunity to introduce students to different learning, teaching, and assessment. And, although there was only one type of submission (a poster) the students could demonstrate they had met the LOs through self-refection, peer-review, and by providing module evaluation. It would be great to offer alternative formats across our assessments on the MBChB where possible, such as podcasts or group submissions, so this was a great opportunity to trial something new and there is learning we can feed-forward into future assessment design.”

Following the peer assessment, we set up a feedback questionnaire in Moodle to ask students about their experiences. 108/117 students agreed or strongly agreed that their skills synthesising information from multiple sources improved. 104 students said their teamwork skills had improved. 94 students stated they enjoyed the activity with another 14 students saying that they neither agreed nor disagreed. Many students made additional, positive comments about the experience; some are included below:

“I really enjoyed this project. I met students I hadn’t spoken to before and it was quite nice to develop team working skills.”

“The two-and-a-half-hour workshop on Monday was useful as I believed it effectively covered everything we needed to know, and it also helped with meeting our group members. I really like the aspect of assigning roles to each group member since it helped provide structure to completing the poster in a timely manner.”

“I enjoyed it as it’s improved my collaboration skills and honed my ability to extract vital information from various sources.”

“I think that the information of setting up teams group and shared files was incredibly useful.”

Thinking of setting up a group work or a peer assessment activity?

If you want to explore alternative forms of assessment and find some support for setting these up in Moodle, please get in touch. Learning Technologists can support with the whole design process including creating mark schemes, creating resources and activities, and providing support on settings options in Moodle.

References

Chin, P. (2016). Peer assessment. New Directions in the Teaching of Natural Sciences, (3), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.29311/ndtps.v0i3.410

Training Offering – Winter 2024

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We are currently offering the following lunch-time training sessions to staff in the Faculty of Health and Medicine (FHM) but staff from across the University are very welcome to join:

Monday 25th November (12-12:30): Moodle H5P Activities: A Showcase

H5P activities are interactive and often gamified content on Moodle such as interactive videos, flashcards, image hotspots, Cornell notes, crosswords and more! In this session you can preview a selection of the activities and learn how to set one up in Moodle. Including H5P content in your Moodle spaces will help engage your students and many of the activities are great for revision.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4293160

Thursday 5th December (12-12:30): A new Moodle layout: images, summaries and more!

Learn how to create a more engaging looking Moodle space by using the “one section per page” layout and adding images and summaries to each of the sections. You will also learn about student feedback on Moodle layouts and templates and what students like to see in a Moodle space.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4293167

Monday 9th December (12-12:30): Making documents accessible

In this short session, we will look at how to use the accessibility features in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. We will also look at how to make .pdf documents accessible using Adobe Acrobat Pro. Due to the length of the session, this will be a demonstration session rather than a workshop. Follow-up appointment details will be shared in the session to book a 1:1 support meeting to put what you have learned into practice if required.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4293168

Monday 16th December (12-12:30): Resource Lists in Moodle

In this short session you will look at how resource lists in Moodle work and how to edit/manage them. You will also learn about how to add shorter weekly or topic based reading/resource lists to your Moodle spaces.

Use this link to book your place: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/4293173

Meetings will take place online and attendees will receive a recording. We hope to see you all there!

A new year, a new look!

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Over the past couple of months, in preparation for the new academic year, I have been supporting staff across the Lancaster Medical School (LMS) and the Division of Health and Research (DHR), to redesign their Moodle pages. The aim has been to create more attractive spaces, that are easier to navigate and more engaging for learners.

Last year, while still working in ISS, I led the Moodle User Experience (UX) Project. We did a student survey as part of the project and we got 273 responses. 82% of respondents were undergraduates and 18% were postgraduate taught students. 139 students said that a good Moodle space was a well-organised one and in many of the free-text responses they mentioned the need for images and colour to make the spaces more visually appealing. Overall, students like Moodle but just find the way content is uploaded difficult to navigate. When asked if Moodle was easy or difficult to use, 83% of students found Moodle easy to use or had a neutral impression of it as “neither easy nor difficult”.  As part of the UX project, we also surveyed staff. Like the students, staff also want to see more attractive Moodle spaces with more colour and images. So enter…the ‘one section per page’ layout.

I have written about this layout before but, over the past few weeks, I have moved several LMS and DHR Moodle spaces to this new layout and want to share with you all the ‘new look’.

Some of the spaces that have undergone this transformation (or are currently undergoing it) include:

  • MBChB Hub
  • Year 4 Primary Care
  • Medicine Year 4
  • Medicine Year 5
  • 407: Mental Health: Theory, Research and Practice
  • DHR Autumn Academy
  • MBCHB101: Problem Based Learning Year 1
A snapshot of the MBChB Hub Space
The newly reorganised MBChB Hub space.
A snapshot of the Year 4 Primary Care Moodle space.
A snapshot of the newly reorganised Year 4 Primary Care Moodle space.

How do you set this up?

Before changing settings and choosing images, consider the organisation of material on your Moodle page. Try to have a clear welcome section at the top with introductory materials such as a handbook, learning objectives etc. This section should not be over-filled though and consideration needs to go into whether some of the material should be on the Moodle space, in a Moodle hub space or even in the Lancaster Student Portal instead. Then group materials into larger sections with sub-headings created using the ‘text and media area’ activity. Folders in Moodle, although a good way to group materials, can mean that students can’t quickly find what they are looking for so avoid using too many of them.

To get the ‘one section per page’ layout, you need to have the following settings under the ‘course format’ section of your Moodle page settings:

  1. Course format: topics
  2. Course layout: one section per page

Once you have chosen the above options, click ‘save and display’.

To add the summaries:

  1. Click the three dots menu next to the topic/section you wish to add a summary too.
  2. Type in your summary. For example, the summary could be some information on what students can find in the section or a ‘to-do’ list for the week.

To add images, choose high quality, landscape images for the best results. These could relate to the topic or subject material or just be high quality photos from around the Lancaster campus.

  1. Click the image icon.
  2. Choose a picture from your file explorer. You can add in information about the ‘Author’ and the licence.
  3. Click ‘upload file’.
  4. Untick ‘auto-size’ and the best size that I have found is 262wx143h (in pixels).
  5. The default option for the image alignment is ‘top’, I would recommend leaving this.
  6. Click ‘save image’.
  7. Once done, click on the image again and change to ‘left alignment’.
  8. Then click ‘save changes’.

A full-video explaining how to set up the above, can be found here:

How else can you improve a Moodle space?

Looking beyond the start of term, there are more things that we can do to improve Moodle spaces and the resources stored in Moodle.

Moodle isn’t OneDrive or Dropbox. It shouldn’t just be a list of Word documents, PowerPoints and PDFs! For a more engaging online learning experience, consider creating high quality videos for students to watch that include some interaction where possible. You can ask a Learning Technologist to support you in filming the material if it is something like a ‘Welcome video’ and the University also has Digital Media Engineers who are on hand to create very high-quality videos. Using the H5P activity (HTML5 package activity) in Moodle, it is possible to create an interactive video with quizzes, text boxes and other interactions popping up for students to engage with. H5P can also be used to create over 50 different content types. More information on H5P activities can be found in another post. These activities can support students to engage with your Moodle space more and can support effective revision/review.

It is a legal requirement that the resources posted on Moodle are digitally accessible. This is something that should always be on our minds when we create resources. For more information on how to improve the digital accessibility of your Moodle course, you can read this article on my ‘10 top tips’. One of these tips includes using Blackboard ALLY, the accessibility tool that is integrated into our Lancaster Moodle spaces, to check how accessible your resources are and use the guidance it gives to improve this if necessary. The score gauge provided by ALLY should always be green in colour.

For support with learning design and Moodle, feel free to get in touch with me. More training sessions on how to create H5P activities, digital accessibility and more will be forthcoming in the next couple of months – keep an eye on your emails!

Ethics and AI: Some ‘takeaways’ from the ALT Winter Summit 2023

Pedagogy, , ,

On Tuesday 12th December, I attended the ALT (Association for Learning Technologists) Winter Summit. The theme of the Conference was Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We heard from the following speakers:

  • Helen Beetham, Researcher and Consultant
  • Mary Jacob, Aberystwyth University
  • Olatunde Durowoju, Liverpool Business School
  • Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner, The University of Birmingham

There was also a student panel at the end which looked at the student experience of AI and their ideas for moving forward with using AI in a higher education context.

The speakers covered topics such as ethical problems and concerns with the use of AI, accessibility and AI and there was a case study showing how AI was used in a session with social work students at the University of Birmingham. It was a really enjoyable day and I learned a lot!

I’d like to share three ‘takeaways’ that I had from the ALT Summit.

Firstly, many of us are aware of some of the issues surrounding the use of AI. For example, the use AI tools takes a huge amount of energy; there are issues around equity and student access to paid for services and tools; there is an impact on student learning; we have also heard in the news that a number of larger companies have sacked ethical advisors and much more! However, one thing I have had experience of in my own work and that was raised at the Summit, was the sheer amount of secrecy behind the training of artificial intelligence models. How are these models trained exactly? Who is training them? What impact does this have? We know about the issues around encoded bias the models and we know that some of the people involved in this training process are underpaid but I definitely want to find out more!

Dr. Olatunde Durowoju spoke on ‘Achieving Inclusive Education in AI’ and has written an article on this in 2023. His talk was really interesting and spoke about some of the positive aspects of using AI and how this can benefit students such as those with neurodiversity, who are learning English as a second language or who have a disability. Examples were given of the use of AI in higher education and how this can help students improve their English language proficiency, how it can help address a cultural gap, how it can help reduce student anxiety around the quality of the work they produce and it can assist those students who may have diminished capacity due to other responsibilities (e.g. caregivers). Some of the examples given included using AI to summarise text to help gain a better understanding of it, improving the quality of writing through prompt engineering, using Chatbots to help with out-of-hours engagement and using AI to pluralise perspectives on a specific topic.

Finally, the student panel gave a real insight into how students are using AI currently, how they perceive its future use and what they would like to see moving forward from their institutions. Students on the panel were from universities such as Sheffield Hallam University, Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Kent. The students were also at different places in their University studies so there was a good range of perspectives across the students. Two of the things that students said they wanted were:

  1. More consistent guidance on the acceptable use of AI in their studies across the departments in their institutions but also across UK institutions in general. They believed this would help students be less confused about when and how they can use it.
  2. More education on the use of AI from their institutions on the problems of using AI such as perpetuating bias and academic integrity concerns.

Thank you to ALT for another wonderful conference and to the speakers for sharing their knowledge and expertise. I will definitely be exploring some of the issues and opportunities that have been mentioned in more detail.

DLT Sharing Practice Event #4

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Come and join the Digital Learning Team and colleagues for our 4th Sharing Practice Event!

The theme for this event is “Collaboration”. We will hear from colleagues on how to facilitate effective groupwork and collaboration amongst students.

The event will be held on Wednesday 13th December 2023 from 2-5pm in Management School LT16 (The Robinson Lecture Theatre). You can drop in and out of the event and attend the sessions you are interested in. Refreshments and cake will be provided!

The current outline of the event is as follows:

2:00 – 2:10 – Intro from the Digital Learning team, Liz Walkden

2:10 – 2:40 – Using learning sets with students and the role of digital learning, Sandra Varey.

2:45 – 3:15 – Collaboration at a distance: asynchronous and synchronous approaches to working with research students at a distance, Steve Wright

3:15 – 3:30 – Break + Refreshments.

3:30 – 4:00 – Accessibility considerations for collaborative and group work, Alison Sharman

4:05 – 4:35 – Using peer evaluation to assess group dynamics on the MBA course, Phil Devine & Stephen Owens

4:40 – 5:00 – Collaboration suite tour, Stephen Owens

You can read more about what each session is about and sign up here.

We look forward to seeing you all!

Lecture Capture: Why do we have it and how is it changing?

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The Panopto system has recently come onto the Digital Learning Team’s remit. We will be helping you manually schedule recordings (if needed!) and ensuring that scheduled recordings are taking place when and where they should. In addition, a new retention policy has come into effect this week regarding content on Panopto so I thought it was a good time for a Panopto blog update!

What is it and why do we have it?

If you are new to Lancaster University, you may not have used Panopto before or perhaps are familiar with a similar lecture capture system like Echo 360. Through the Panopto system, it is possible to record lectures and other teaching content for students to play back. It can record the lecturer and the resources like a PowerPoint or something shown on a visualiser.

Lecture capture is really useful for students as it helps them review material that they are not confident with, revise for exams and also helps them not feel left behind if they miss a lecture. Panopto is available in all lecture rooms in the following buildings: Biology, Bowland Main, Bowland North, Charles Carter, County Main, County South, Faraday, Furness, Fylde, George Fox, LICA and the Management School.  It is important to note that your permission needs to be given for automatic recordings to take place, recordings aren’t turned on by default. To opt-in, get in touch with your department coordinator. Lecture recordings are turned on via LUSI for regularly timetabled sessions. For one off sessions, lecture capture can be requested by completing the relevant form. Staff are required to check that captions are provided on all recordings and to make sure that the captions are accurate to ensure that resources are accessible to everyone. Once this has been done, the recordings can be shared with students, for example via Moodle. It is also possible to add quizzes into Panopto recordings to check student understanding and make the resources more engaging for revision purposes.

During the pandemic, the number of recorded lecturers increased dramatically (as expected!). This number has remained high with 60,881 Panopto videos added to Moodle via the Panopto activity in the last academic year. Students find lecture capture a particularly valuable learning tool as highlighted in JISC’s ‘Student Digital Experience Insights survey 2022/23’ from September 2023. The survey found that students thought lecture recording was “one of the most positive aspects of learning using digital technology”. The survey also showed just how widely used lecture capture is in higher education to the point where it is considered the norm. As a result, we hope this resource will continue to be widely used by staff to support students here at Lancaster.

How is Panopto changing?

A new Panopto retention policy came into effect this week. The retention policy has come into effect to ensure that there is room for more footage to be recorded in the coming years (things were getting full!). This means that 27587 videos, which equates to around 30054 hours of footage, were placed in the Panopto archive. Don’t panic! This does not mean that they have been deleted!

The videos that have been archived were identified as resources that are over 4 years old and have not been viewed in the past twelve months. These videos have been moved to a separate storage system, the ‘archive’ in Panopto. You can still search for these videos on Panopto and request to view them. They will then be extracted from the archive which will take around 20 minutes. If these videos are then regularly viewed, they will not return to the archive, but if there are no further views in 30 days, they will return to the archive. If you have recordings on Panopto that have been archived the ‘archived’ button will appear (see image below). If there are no videos in the archive made by you this button will not be shown. Students and staff can also request archived footage that has been embedded or added as an activity in Moodle as the link on the Moodle page will take you to Panopto to make this request for archived footage. If needed, Panopto has provided some instructions on how to restore content from the archive folder.

Archive icon on Panopto

For more information on Panopto and how to use it, look at the Panopto information available on ASK. There are also terms and conditions that come along with recording in Panopto that you should be aware of.

What do students want? An insight from the ALT Conference 2023

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From 5th September to 7th September, Tim Ellis and I (Liz Walkden) attended the Association of Learning Technologists (ALT) Conference. ‘Student Voices: Shaping the Post-Pandemic Campus’ was day two’s keynote session. The purpose of the session was to emphasise the importance of the student voice and to encourage collaboration between policy makers, educators, and learners. It gave us first-hand insights into the experiences of learners following the pandemic. The students studied at three different universities so their opinions and views may not reflect the views of all students or those studying at Lancaster. We heard from a second-year student, a third-year student and a recent graduate. They gave candid accounts into the difficulties that students faced during their time at university. I wanted to share with you three takeaways that I had from listening to the panel’s experiences which readers may find ‘food for thought’.

One of the things that most stood out was the students’ discussions around ‘digital shock’. The panel acknowledged that the technological understanding and knowledge required at university is much more advanced than what was required of them only a couple of months before when they were finishing their A-levels. One member of the panel wanted lecturers to know that most of their previous learning had been done on pen and paper and that they only received their first laptop when they went to University.  To this student, typing was hard and so they used a notebook instead of a laptop in lectures. The student felt this was isolating because everyone else was using an electronic device. The student also then said that engaging with the learning materials and the assignments was also very difficult and that there was an assumption that students would be able to use technology easily.

In addition to the lack of ‘know-how’ when it came to the technology required, students also felt isolated by the access that they had to technology. The student who had recently graduated was frustrated by the fact that she wasn’t told about the possibility of borrowing a laptop earlier and she had been struggling to work on a slow and unreliable device. Another student was frustrated that the Chromebook they had been able to afford to buy did not actually have the right processing power for the technology that they were required to use on their course. One student said, “you feel silly when you don’t have the right technology”. We want students to be digitally literate and able to use technology in their future career with confidence but how do we encourage this and help students to navigate this digital world? The students had some suggestions:

  1. Make the technological requirements of a course clear very early on. Students will be buying new devices before they join the University and should be forewarned if the software they need to use has certain device specifications or needs a certain level of technical ‘know-how’. This would help prepare students and prevent a sense of digital isolation.
  2. Signpost where students can get help. Students struggled to find the information on central websites or portals and often felt lost. The panel suggested that lecturers put up a slide at the start of a lecture while waiting for everyone to sit down which could highlight help, important opportunities, or give answers to frequently asked questions.
  3. Don’t assume that all young people are confident in their use of technology.

The second thing that students were keen for us to understand was how difficult and intimidating they find it to ask questions and get support not only from their lecturers but also from each other. They felt there was an expectation that they would be able to contact other students, work together and speak to the lecturers easily. Some students did manage to set up WhatsApp and/or Snapchat groups. However, they knew that not all the students in their cohort were in these groups and that they didn’t know all their fellow students. A variety of suggestions were made that could help students to collaborate and feel supported at university:

Continue reading What do students want? An insight from the ALT Conference 2023 →

10 ‘Top Tips’ On Improving Accessibility

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Yesterday, the Inclusive Learning Network at Lancaster University met via Teams, led by Dr Ann-Marie Houghton, Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). The Inclusive Learning network is an open network that meets regularly to hear from colleagues across the University. The network includes representatives from a range of areas including Learning Developers, the Global Experience Team, Careers, Counselling and wellbeing, LGBTQIA+ Allies, the Disability Service and many more! It provides an opportunity to share good practice to improve the experience for staff and students at Lancaster. It has a broad remit and the group is passionate about making the University a place that is open and inclusive. Stephen Owens and I (Liz Walkden) were delighted to be invited to speak alongside other speakers including Amanda Pharaoh, who spoke about the Student Money Advice Service, and Heath Boffey, who shared updates on Digital Accessibility.

Stephen and I spoke about the work of the DLT team and particularly about the Moodle upgrade and how the changes had improved accessibility. At the end of the session, Dr Ann-Marie Houghton asked Stephen and I what are top tips were that could help staff improve the accessibility of their courses for students. So, I thought I would write this blog post to spread the word a bit more and share out 10 ‘Top Tips’ for improving accessibility.

  1. Use accessibility checkers

Microsoft programs, Adobe and many others have accessibility checkers. Next time you open a Word document, check the bottom of the screen and you will see an accessibility rating alongside the word count, language and page number. You can get to the checker on a Word document by clicking the ‘Review’ tab at the top and you will find the ‘Check Accessibility’ option on the banner.

The banner and tabs at the top of Microsoft Word. With the 'Review' tab open and 'check accessibility' highlighted with a red square around it.

 

 

Mamuna Hussain recommends opening the Accessibility Checker before you begin typing and that way you can review accessibility as you go along. This will save you time as you won’t have to address all the issues at the end.

  1. Explain acronyms, jargon and key words

I am often guilty of assuming people understand the acronyms I use, VLE, VR, AR…the list goes on! For the first few hours I started working at the University, I was convinced LUSI (‘Lucy’) was a person who knew loads but only seemed to share the information at night? I was very confused about our Lancaster University Student Records System (LUSI)! To make sure everyone can fully understand the information we convey we should aim to use simple, easy to understand language where appropriate and explain what we mean. For example, I can still use the acronyms VLE, VR and AR but it is good practice to say at the start that they stand for Virtual Learning Environment, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

  1. Use ALLY to monitor and improve the accessibility of your resources.

Blackboard ALLY is an accessibility tool that integrates with Moodle. It provides you with guidance on how to improve the accessibility of your resources as well as giving your resources a rating using a coloured dial.

Writing which reads 'Week 2 - Lecture Slides' with an ALLY score provided on a green dial next to the writing.

If your resources on Moodle have a low rating, you can click on the dial and this will review your document. Issues that need to be addressed will be outlined with a thick red bar and guidance on what the issues are is also provided.

A PowerPoint slide with an image that is outlined in red by the Blackboard Ally tool. The Ally score and guidance is on the right hand side of the image.

  1. Add alternative (ALT) text to the images.

This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to improve accessibility (and your ALLY score) on Moodle. When you include an image in a document, write a brief description of the information the picture conveys. For example, the image above has the ALT text “a PowerPoint slide with an image that is outlined in red by the Blackboard Ally tool. The Ally score and guidance is on the right hand side of the image.” If the image is purely for decoration and does not convey anything meaningful you can mark these images as ‘decorative’, and they will be ignored by software such as screen readers. Accessibility checkers will prompt you to include ALT text where appropriate.

  1. Choose appropriate colours

Poor colour contrast between text and background colours can make resources difficult to read for everyone! Have you ever tried to read white text on a light blue background or yellow text on a white background? Readers should find the information you present easy to see. If you are unsure of what colours are best to choose when it comes to having the right colour contrast, Lancaster University AppsAnywhere gives staff access to the Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA) which is easy to use and shows you whether your colour contrast meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and even shows you whether it meets the AA or AAA criteria (resources should meet AA standard).

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